Executive Summary
The marketing plan of all the contemporary issues related to e-marketing of the university, the plan consists of the propagation of the complete market plan for the university in the upcoming online program. The plan consists of analysis, researching and final implementation of the project for success. It finds the budgetary activities and the investment of 1000Euro for the complete project.
Introduction
The plan is designed for Middlesex university for conducting a seminar in Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Lamego, Portugal for attracting more number of students and to identify the contemporary issues related with the integrated marketing.
Background of the study
Middlesex University Business School is one of the most excellent and biggest educational centres in London. There are many campuses of this university in other countries which are standing in a higher position. They achieved awards for the best university and also got awards for most genius from this university. This university provides various undergraduate and postgraduate courses for professional and business education. They offer both theory and practical classes; moreover, high skilled and professional educators are taking the classes. This university is mainly intended for increasing the knowledge of students in integrated marketing communication. “This course covers the key subjects related to marketing communications as strategic marketing tool, including an analysis of the core components of marketing communications, such as advertising, public relations and sales promotions.” (Marketing communications, 2008, p.1).
Positioning strategy
This business school provides good facilities like hostel, library, lab, students club etc and also conducts recruitment during the academic period. Many students of this campus achieved job in big organizations. Thus, during the stages of education itself they are ensuring a better career for the students. By doing this course, many big organizations attract skilled staff as they are giving better training for developing their talent in doing job. For increasing their marketing strategy they provide several services and facilities to the students. For the capable and brilliant students they offer scholarship and free educational and residential amenities.
The students are supported by giving awards. Moreover, they conduct various supporting and interesting programs for the development of the students like seminar, sports, etc. This university conducts awareness program regarding environmental pollution and diseases that are spreading rapidly all over the world. As the technology is changing very rapidly, the integrated marketing communication plays an important role in it. So, nowadays many students are doing this course.
Marketing communication objective
“All marketing communications should be
- directed to particular target market,
- clearly positioned,
- created to achieve a specific objective,
- undertaken to accomplish the objective within budget constraint.” (Shimp 2008, p.156).
Integrated marketing is “a management concept that is designed to make all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a unified force, rather than permitting each to work in isolation.” (Lake 2009, para.1).
Integrated marketing helps in maintaining a good relationship with the customers which helps in increasing profits. Marketing communication is a small part in marketing activity. Marketing communication is integrated so that all the messages are integrated together and carried to the customers. Integrated marketing communication helps to increase sales and profits and also to save time and money.
Some of the main objectives of marketing communication are:
- To help the students to gain better knowledge about the policy of promotion and marketing communication management process.
- To build up a financial and original explanation for marketing communication.
- To understand the requirements of creating the marketing communication more firmly based.
- To implement the policy of marketing communication in a right and authorized way.
The Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Lamego, Portugal has realized the importance of marketing communication and they have started several courses for teaching marketing communication. In the first two years, basic knowledge about marketing is taught and more specialised knowledge is provided in the third year. The objective of marketing communication courses in Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Lamego, Portugal is to provide a good career in marketing in the future. The courses also enable the people who are either in commercial or non-commercial field to know what marketing is.
Communication is an important element in marketing. It provides information to the customers about advertisements, selling, sales promotion, publicity and public relations activities. Marketing communication is included in the marketing courses of the university mainly in the last year. The students who are interested in advertising, public relations, communications specialist etc will be benefited by the learning marketing communications. The objectives of marketing communication in the university is to provide ability for the employees to work in the fields of advertising, branding, public relations, marketing on customer relationship, events management etc.
Advertising strategy
“It is any paid form of non-personal communication link, initiated by an identified marketer, to establish or continue exchange relationships with customers and at times, with other stakeholders.” (Shoba 2006, p.1).
The successful e-marketing is considered to be the critical success of the firm and its different factors like the organization, employees, and co-ordinators. E-marketing gives a crucial edge for the post graduation and graduation students in the marketing arena. The online advertising strategy is inexpensive and effective, if they are used efficiently. Advertising is the back born of any organization and the product becomes success in the market only when it is efficiently advertised.
When advertising of e-marketing of a master’s course is considered, importance should be given to the students and the probable links used by them should be considered, the course advantage and the arising prospects should be conveyed in a better manner. “Before you begin seeking out advertising avenues, develop an advertising budget.” (Internet advertising strategies for small businesses, 2009, para.2).
Kinds of advertising strategy
There are mainly three types of online advertising strategy.
- Link Exchanges: If the advertising budget for the company is limited and if it is a newly start up company or the one to advertise at first, the fear of losing money may prevent them from the advertisement and the site advertisement may cost more to the company, at such instances the business owners are to target to sell or offer their complementary products. This will have the exchange of products of the company and the others.
- News letter advertising: The news letter advertising is useful when the idea is conveyed to the particular group of the customer; they give more importance to in-depth advertisement in the newsletter, which may be given to the potential customer. It is the expensive method of advertisement; this may also lead to much attention of the customers. The method is adopted by a company only when the advertisement budget is high.
- Budget advertising: These are the set of keywords used in advertising by purchasing key words from the website and an amount is paid as expense, by considering the advertisement budget. This approach is a useful one for the small business or for the start up companies for advertising. A time limit is kept for each display of the advertising.
- Website promotion strategy: This kind of promotion may consist of different e-books used for the promotion of the website; this is used in the effective information from the newsletter, directory and books that are provided for promotion.
Advertising tools for promotion
The advertisement promotion tools are those which promote the online advertising, profitability of the firm and the revenue generation of the firm. Advertisement is the main form of promotion which may include the web visitors to be the buyers and the effective promotion of the business. The tools should be such that they should be a product out of the business planning and the budget analysis.
Other promotional strategies
Different kinds of tools used for the promotion are the search engine optimization; email marketing, pay click method and the online classification of the advertisement. The main aim of these is to convert the web visitors as the web site buyers. Many of the online advertising convey deep knowledge of them to the customers and help them purchase the material at ease. This can be useful in marketing the program especially for the students for knowing the details of the course mix and pursuing the course.
Marketing campaign
The marketing campaign is the different kinds of campaigns conducted by the organization for the promotion of the product. There are different stages for campaigning:
- Defining the customer: This consists of identifying the different customers and the potentiality of buying the product in the organization and the kind of the customers male or female, their income, the job profile etc and they are much useful in the analysis of the plan.
- Choosing targets: The choosing of the targets is the method used for the process; they can be the methods that are to be adopted, like the pay per click method for the advertisement and the use of mail catalogue and then fixing of the target of how many are to be targeted.
- Budget: The budget is the main process where the members of the organization come together, the thorough analysis is to be made about the budgetary constraints before fixing of the price for each of the product. The budget should be allocated for each of the process in detail depending on the nature of advertising.
- Ad-content: The content of the advertisement is very important the content is to be correctly provided for the understanding of the customers, this is the only matter were the perception of the people plays a vital role.
- Monitoring advertisement: This depends on the tracking of the advertisement. Different kinds of feedback received from the customers should be analyzed, such as different revenues generated and the positive response towards the firm.
Integrated marketing communication scheduling
The time limit of the plan is four months (January – April). The promotional activities are allocated in such a way that all the activities must be completed within the specified time limit. The activities are scheduled based on the intensity and complexity of the task and particularly the market communication objectives. The delivery date for the plan is April, 2010. The set of activities that are required to achieve the objective of the plan is scheduled in a table. The activities are listed and the start and the completion time are also mentioned in the table.
Budget allocation
The total budget allocated for the plan is £1000. The following table shows the allocation of budget for various activities.
Conclusion
This is a plan which depicts all contemporary issues that are related with advertising activities undertaken by the university. This plan gives a clear idea about the positioning strategies and cost incurred for each activity in a plan. An efficient integrated marketing plan brings out efficiency in the overall advertising activity.
Reference List
Internet advertising strategies for small businesses, 2009. AllBusiness.com. Web.
Lake, L., 2009. Integrated marketing communication (IMC). About. Marketing.
Marketing communications, 2008. Middlesex University in London, p.1.
Shimp, T.A., 2008. Advertising promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Cengage Learning, p. 156.
Shoba., 2006. Integrated marketing communications. Indian Institute of Technology Madras, p.1. Web.